Lodel Caplan, Craft Talk

Posted by Wes Bradford on Aug 01, 2017

Lodel was born in Mindanao, the southern main island of the Philippines, at a time when there was political unrest on that island due to conflicts between the government and the Muslim minority there. She has 2 younger brothers.

The family soon moved to the central islands (Visayas), where her father established a dental office. She describes her early life there as “good”, but her father died when she was age 5. Her mother moved the family to Manila in the northern island of Luzon with relatives, where they could live in an apartment building built by her grandparents.

They moved to California when she was 14. Her mother found a job working for a Catholic Church, so Lodel was in the choir and enrolled in the church school.

She joined the Toastmasters to improve her confidence and speaking ability, where she met her future husband, Jon Caplan. She works for the administration of the Molina Medical Group, which provides care for Medi-Cal & indigent patients (which has business uncertainty now due to threatened cutbacks in government healthcare support). She feels honored to be a part of Rotary.